The present invention relates to automated systems for analyzing and regulating plans for work processes.
A major concern of businesses or any other group of people working together on a joint project is the efficient achievement of the goal of the project. In achieving this goal, many different tasks are performed by a variety of individuals within the group. Many of these tasks may only be performed after one or more other tasks are completed. Further, there is usually much communication between individuals or groups in the course of completing a task or in connection with indicating that a task has been completed. The various tasks necessary to complete the overall project or achieve an overall goal and the overall interrelationship between these tasks are called a work process.
In order to efficiently complete a project, the work process used to complete the project must be efficiently designed and efficiently executed. Much time and energy is devoted by organizations in seeking to improve the efficiency of both the design and the execution of work processes. In this quest, many different methods and systems used by computers for modelling work processes have been used. Some of these systems for modelling work processes have been used primarily to study a work process to find ways to make the process more efficient. Other systems for modelling work processes have been used primarily to aid in the efficient operation of a defined work process.
These prior methods and systems of modelling work processes suffer from a variety of disadvantages. Most of these methods and systems require the programming of the work process into a computer by a specialist, extensively trained in the use of the system and how to program it. Once the system has been programmed with a model of a work process, the model can be analyzed to determine inefficiencies and/or can be used to manage the execution of the modelled work process. However, once inefficiencies have been found or the work process model must be changed for other reasons, the programming specialist must be called in to reprogram the system to incorporate the changes.
Another disadvantage of the prior art work process modelling systems are that they are deterministic in nature. In other words, information or a journey through a series of tasks can only flow in one direction. Thus, a work process is not allowed to have loops or branches modified while the work process model is being executed so that when a task is or a series of tasks are executed multiple times, they must follow a predetermined sequence of tasks each time.